1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a substrate holder system, a substrate bonding apparatus, and a device manufacturing method.
2. Background Art
As shown in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H11-261000, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-251972, and Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2007-115978, a known layered semiconductor apparatus is formed by layering semiconductor substrates that each have elements, circuits, and the like formed thereon. When layering the semiconductor substrates, a pair of semiconductor substrates supported by substrate holders are positioned with a degree of accuracy corresponding to the line width of the semiconductor circuits and then layered, after which the entirety of each substrate is heated and pressurized to achieve bonding. At this time, a positioning apparatus that fixes the position of the pair of semiconductor substrates and a heating and pressurizing apparatus that realizes the permanent bonding via pressurization and heating are used.
When two semiconductor substrates are layered, if even a small amount of dust is trapped between the semiconductor circuit regions facing each other, the circuit operations becomes unacceptable. Furthermore, this can lead to localized occurrences of insufficient pressurization and heating, resulting in insufficient bonding strength. The semiconductor processing is generally performed within a clean room, but the apparatuses that handle the semiconductor substrates include various components whose operations, such as diving, sliding, or flowing, generate dust. One such component is a substrate holder. In the positioning apparatus, for example, when substrate holders respectively holding semiconductor substrates are integrated to form a layered semiconductor in a sandwiched state, it is necessary to use a fixing mechanism to fix the substrate holders to each other. The contact locations in this fixing mechanism generate dust. Accordingly, a substrate holder fixing mechanism is desired that can sufficiently restrict the dust.